Microsoft said it had agreed to buy Powerset, a start-up that is working on a new class of Web search that relies on insights from linguistics rather than simple keyword strings.

Jim Gray, a scientist at Microsoft and I.B.M. who went missing at sea in 2007, was remembered by friends and colleagues at a weekend tribute at UC Berkeley.

Microsoft posted a fall in quarterly profit from a year ago when the software maker got a one-time earnings bump from revenue deferred by the delays in releasing software upgrades.